


human

by lemonheadlester



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Afterlife, Disaster, M/M, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 12:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20407519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonheadlester/pseuds/lemonheadlester
Summary: Sometimes people wonder weather it's better to feel pain or nothing at all. It's a question, like many others, that's most likely not meant to be answered.





	human

**Author's Note:**

> Just as a disclaimer I don't actually believe in any sort of afterlife. This is in no way meant to represent heaven, hell, or any religion. This is just meant to look at what an afterlife could realistically look like if it were to exist. Thank you again to @philhcwell (tumblr) for beta reading this for me.

_ What's been going on with you lately?" _

Dan just stares at the floor. His throat feels dry and his eyes are watering. He can't bring himself to say anything, so he does nothing.

_ "Dan."  _

Phil's voice is almost an echo at this point. Part of Dan thinks that if he drowns him out enough then eventually he'll stop yelling.

Hopefully.

_ "Are you even listening to me?" _

It's not the first time they've fought. All week it's been like this. Their fights are less them yelling at each other and more Dan just shutting down as Phil gets progressively angrier.

Dan realizes his frustrating is warranted, and it's not like he intends to shut Phil out. It just happens. He doesn't really know how to explain to him why it's just easier for him to ignore him sometimes. 

Usually, their relationship is great. They're just going through a normal hiccup, as a couple would. After a few nights of tension it's usually over and everything goes on as if it never happened.

Phil does give up, finally. Dan doesn't want him to see, not when he's like this. Not when he's on the verge of tears with his arms crossed as he hugs his knees to his chest shakily. 

He needs to get away, so he does.

-

He doesn't know where he's headed, not really. It takes him a few hours of walking around aimlessly in a desolate park for him to be able to attempt to call Phil and apologize.

It rings. Once. Twice. Three times. Five times. And then a few more times for good measure before it goes to voicemail.

"Hello." Phil's pre recorded voices sounds upbeat and happy, inappropriate in a situation like this. Dan wants to scream. 

"Phil can't come to the phone right now, so leave a message after the beep."

Dan sighs in frustration. 

"Hey, Phil." He starts, unsure of what he's even going to say at this point. "I'm sorry, okay?" 

He looks around, the sound of night surrounds him with chirping crickets and hooting owls. He doesn't belong out here, he belongs with Phil.

"I'm coming home. We can talk about this, alright?"

He's about to hang up, but something stops him. He needs to say one last thing before he does.

"I love you, Phil."

He ends the call and shoves his phone in his pockets, heading back in the direction he came.

-

Dan is about halfway home when his phone buzzes from inside his pocket. His heart jumps at the assumption that it's most likely Phil. Who else would be contacting him at two in the morning.

But it's not Phil, Dan's heart drops to his feet and his knees buckle when he sees what's causing his phone to vibrate so obnoxiously.

The alarms in their flat are going off. 

He opens the app and his hopes don't just sink, they drown. He feels like he's suffocating under the words that he's reading on his screen.

_ This can't be happening.  _ _ This can't be real. _

He doesn't waste any more time. Their building is only a few blocks away, so he does something he never does. 

He runs. 

He runs and he doesn't slow down no matter how much his chest burns and aches and screams at him to slow down. He doesn't care about his pain, he only cares about Phil and keeping him safe. 

He turns another corner to see that the fire brigade is in front of their building, and his worst fears are confirmed right then and there. Once he finally gets there to see for himself, he looks up.

Their apartment is on fire.

Dan isn't thinking anymore. He runs inside. No one can stop him. This is his  _ home.  _ His  _ life.  _ Phil is everything to him and right now he's in danger.

Distant voices chase after him, demanding he stop, but Dan isn't listening. 

He doesn't dare use the lift. He darts up several flights of stairs, not bothering to slow down when the air begins to fill with smoke. He has to get Phil out of here. 

"Phil!" He screams, charging towards the front door and fumbling with his keys as he unlocks it.

"Phil! Where are you!?"

The sound of alarms shrieking fills his ears. He tries to block it out and listen for Phil's voice. 

He's met with a horrific sight. Their entire apartment, all of their belongings, all being swallowed in flames. Pictures frames fall from the walls and kick knacks tumble to the floor. 

"Phil!?" Dan screams again, growing more desperate with each burst of flames he hears.

Finally, when he approaches their bedroom, he hears a faint voice. 

"Dan?"

He freezes. The door is open but the doorway is engulfed in flames. He sees Phil on the other side, startled and afraid as he makes eye contact with him. 

The walls are covered in flames, so is the ceiling. There is no window. Phil could do was sit on their bed, alone. Shivering in fear. 

"Dan!" He shouts. "Are you crazy? Get out of here!"

Dan shakes his head furiously. "Like hell!"

He has to think quickly. He needs to find a way to get inside.

_ A blanket.  _ He realizes.  _ I need a blanket.  _

It's not ideal, but it could work. He runs back down the hall to the guest room and pulls the duvet from the bed. It's heavy. He lugs it back down the hall and attempts to smother the flames with it.

It works, to an extent. It's enough for him to be able to pass through the doorway and get inside. 

He's about to run to Phil when something above them creaks, causing both of them to look up, frozen in fear.

There's nothing Dan can do before the ceiling caves and it comes crashing down.

"Phil!" Dan scream, for probably the hundredth time. He has to look away when debris comes flying towards him and dust fills the room. 

When the smoke clears, he opens his eyes, and what he sees is Phil.

Phil, who's stuck on the other side of the collapsed debris, trapped by flames on all sides, nowhere to go.

"No." Dan sobs. "No!"

Phil's face is drenched in tears now. He knows it, Dan knows it too. He's about to die. 

Dan is still determined to get him out, all rational thought completely gone as he looks around for something,  _ anything  _ that could help.

He grabs his hair and breathes heavily. He can feel his heart in his throat.

He can't do anything, especially not when two pairs of arms grab him from behind.

"Get off of me!" He screams, struggling to get back to Phil. "Let me go! Help him for fucks sake!"

They say nothing to him. They just drag him away, screaming and crying. 

He can't think clearly at this point, but one things for sure, he could never have mistaken the screams he hears coming from the flaming apartment for anything else.

-

They hold him down for about half an hour while the rest of them work on putting out the fire. He hears various comments along the lines of  _ 'there was nothing you could do'  _ and  _ 'no one could save him, not even you.’  _

He's not listening. He resents the attempted condolences. Even when the fire is finally out, he doesn't feel relief. He feels empty.

Because Phil is gone. 

He sobs for hours, sitting on the edge of an ambulance, not daring to listen to anything else anyone has to say to him. He picks up bits of conversations between firefighters and police here and there, but ultimately he's somewhere else.

He doesn't know how to handle pain like this.

When all the chaos has settled and someone approaches him, he reluctantly asks if he can see Phil's body.

"There's nothing left." The officer responds. "We found nothing but ashes."

"How did this happen?" He sobs. "I should have been there, I shouldn't have left."

"We've isolated the cause. " She says. "It was a gas leak."

"We received a call from your mother. She wants to see you."

Dan wraps the blanket he'd been given around his body tightly as he cries. He doesn't care who sees him like this. He doesn't care about anything anymore. 

He just wants the pain to end. 

-

He never calls his mum back, or anyone else for that matter. He's lost everything. His home. His life. His love.

Everything that ever meant anything, ripped away from him in a single night. 

It hurts. He wants to stop hurting, he wants to wake up. All he can do is stare out in the mirror of a hotel bathroom as he vigorously washes the tears from his face with freezing cold water. Maybe if it's cold enough he'll feel numb.

But he doesn't feel anything but anger. Hot, boiling anger that burns through his skin and makes him want to scream his vocal chords out of his throat. His face feels hot and his chest feels tight. 

There's an empty pit in his heart. One Phil used to fill with smiles and kisses and acceptance, but he's gone and he's never coming back. 

It hits Dan that he's lost the only person that ever really truly loved him in his life. It fills him with rage, with hate towards the disgusting world that he's trapped in. He feels as if the walls are caving in, just as they did that night when they sealed Phil's fate. 

Dan does the only thing his mind urges him to do and drives his fist into the mirror so hard he smashes it. 

He hand shakes as blood trickles down his fingers. He doesn't care, he needs to feel something, something other than the pain of loss.

If he had any energy left, he might've destroyed the whole room. Instead, he just lies hopelessly awake on the bed, hot tears spill down his cheeks as he balls the sheets into his fists, staining them with blood. He chokes down his sobs as the vivid memory of Phil's screams echo in his mind like a broken record. It's too much. He just wants to sink into the bed and suffocate.

_ "Are you even listening to me?"  _ His last words to him before he left. They replay over and over again. Dan wonders is he's going mad, if he's actually starting to hear voices or if it's all happening in his head. 

"I never listened," he croaks, staring up at the white ceiling with wide eyes, vision blurred from the pools of tears. "I should have fucking listened."

It's like he's living his worst nightmare. Maybe if he begs the universe enough he'll wake up, and none of this will have been real.

But that will never happen. 

He lets out another strangled sob and a few stray tears slip past his lips. They taste bitter on his tongue. 

He eventually manages to give in to sleep several hours later. In that same position. He pleads for it all to be fake, to dream about Phil and never wake up, but there's nothing but darkness in his mind. Nothing but a void where Phil once was.

Even when he receives Phil's ashes a few days later. It doesn't feel right, he doesn't feel closure of any kind. He's even willing to bet that it isn't even Phil at all, and it's just scraped together remains of the apartment.

It doesn't matter to him, not really. Still, he can't bear to look at the clay bowl that's sat on the table of his hotel room, taunting him. 

It's not Phil. Anything short of Phil means nothing to him.

He decides to check his phone for the first time in several days, wanting to escape and distraction. Instead, he's met with notifications stuffed with missed calls and consoling messages, none or which he cares to listen to or read. 

He doesn't bother unlocking his phone, he just tosses it across the room and falls back onto the bed, shoving his face into a pillow to muffle the onslaught of screaming that follows.

He spends the next few days like that before it gets to a point where he can't keep doing it anymore, he has to do something. 

The first time he goes outside in a while, he brings nothing with him except the clay pot. He needs to do something with it.

Just like every other time he's run off, he doesn't know where he's going. Only this time, he doesn't want to ever come back. 

He finds himself by a waterfall not far from the hotel. A river runs below a cliff there, a perfect, peaceful place to spread the ashes.

He stares down at the current as it rushes past the rocks and branches, closing his swollen eyes and listening to the sounds around him. It's all so obnoxiously peaceful he just wants to let the madness inside his head out and into the wild, but it's all stuck there. Nowhere for it to go. Nowhere for  _ him  _ to go.

Except down.

Dan looks down again, shaking uncontrollably as the thought enters his mind. A quick end to his pain, right there in front of him. 

So in the moment that has his heart bleeding and his insides screaming, he doesn't care about what others will think or say. He could hardly think straight anymore. So with the last tangible thoughts he could muster, he mutters two words.

"I'm sorry."

And without another thought, he closes his eyes. With one last exhale, blinking away his last few tears while clutching Phil's ashes in his arms, he jumps. 

-

Dan blinks a few times before abruptly sitting up, gasping when he doesn't feel any pain.

He looks around. He's still on the cliff. He wonders briefly if he imagined it all before he sees someone standing by the edge of the waterfall.

It's undoubtedly Phil.

_ This must be some kind of afterlife.  _ Dan thinks, sitting up and taking in his surroundings.

Everything is blank and desolate, frozen in place. It's like being behind a blank and white screen. There are no sounds of running water, howling wind, or chirping birds. Dan can't hear a thing. It's the eerie sound of nothing. Everything around him is still, all colours desaturated. It's like he's stepped inside some strange monochromatic alternate reality.

But something even stranger happens when Phil, turns around to stare at him, eyes still impossibly blue among the grayscale surroundings.

He doesn't feel a thing.

He doesn't feel the tightness of emotion in his chest, or the urge to run up to him and hug him and apologize for not being able to save him. Something strikes him hard then as he stares back with a blank gaze.

He's no longer human.

He's dead and so is Phil. He realizes this as he approaches him slowly, still waiting to feel something.

Still, nothing. 

They're just ghosts of what they once were, fragments of their existence, the only thing left standing now.

"Hi." Phil greets him plainly, gesturing for him to sit down with him. They dangle their feet over the edge and Dan looks down to see nothing but a void in front of them. 

"Is this some kind of twisted purgatory or what?" Dan wonders. He doesn't feel fear when he stares into the abyss.

"Not sure." Phil responds. "I wasn't sure how long I'd be waiting here for you."

"I guess you didn't have to wait very long, did you?"

Phil shakes his head. They don't make eye contact when they speak, they just stare into the distance, unaffected by each other's presence. 

"This is where we go when we have unfinished business. There are things we still wanted to say to each other when we were alive, and this is our chance to do so."

Dan nods. "You know this, how?"

"I just do." Phil shrugs. "I knew I'd have to wait here until you died."

"I did have questions for you." Dan remembers. Something triggers his awareness of the situation. 

Phil doesn't move. He speaks as if he's a robot. Dan wonders if he looks the same.

"Me too. You go first though."

"Did you get my voicemail before the fire started?"

Phil nods. "I was never mad at you."

Dan feels nothing. He only hears what his human self would have liked to know.

"What caused the fire, do you know?"

Dan thinks back to what he was told by the investigators.

"The damn gas leak." He recalls. 

Phil doesn't react, he just nods. They keep going like that for a while. Asking questions and simply answering them without second thought or care.

"Did you feel pain?" 

"Yes. It's the last thing I remember feeling." Phil stares down at the ominously still waterfall. "Did you jump?"

"I did." 

"Why did you do it?"

"I couldn't live without you, I guess."

Phil looks up with a sigh. "You would rather feel nothing than feel pain?"

Dan suddenly turns to look at him, studying the burns on Phil's skin. Still, he feels nothing. 

"I don't know, to be honest." He admits. "I know I really want to feel something right now."

"Me too." Phil huffs. 

They sit in silence for a few moments before they realize that their time here is running out. They can't stay for much longer if they have nothing else to say. They don't know how they know this but neither of them question it.

"So do we just jump? Where will we go?"

Phil nods. "We don't go anywhere, Dan. We're dead, remember?"

It's the first time he referred to Dan by his name since he's been here. He instinctively expects to feel something in response. But still, he feels nothing. 

He stands up and stares down into the darkness below them, closing his eyes and accepting his fate. But before he can jump, he feels Phil's fingers sliding in between his. He lets their hands be linked, but neither of them show any signs of emotion. They don't feel love towards each other now that they're dead, and that just doesn't feel right.

"For old times sake?" Phil stands up next to Dan. "Let's leave this world together."

Dan nods, holding Phil's hand firmly. They both take a deep breath simultaneously, letting their eyes fall shut as they fall forward and vanish into the night. 

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on tumblr @lemonheadlester


End file.
